


do you have room

by haipollai



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Memories, Roadtrip, Steve and Bucky deaged by a few years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:39:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haipollai/pseuds/haipollai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The doctors say he's probably around twenty seven, twenty eight, based on the limited time he had out of cryo though the lines on his his face speak a different story, too many lives for anyone to lead. Steve bites his tongue while they tut over the science. They say he should be older if he enlisted at eighteen. Fury gives Steve knowing that Steve is hiding something, and he can give a damn good guess as to what</p>
<p>Fury finally says it doesn't matter, as long as he's healthy the details don't matter. As long as he's useful, is what's said between the lines.</p>
<p>The doctors say he's as healthy as he could be. They say his memories should come back on their own. They say. They  say. They say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	do you have room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lanyon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/gifts).



> Title from Fall Out Boy's Alone Together  
> So awhile ago, Lanyon made some tags on a post:  
> # it’s the one where bucky was sixteen and lied to enlist # and now it’s the 21st century and he doesn’t remember much about anything # except that his left arm is metal # like wtf # and steve has the harried expression and he’s just telling bucky to drive # and bucky doesn’t really remember steve # but he remembers being loved # just like he remembers being terrified # and he remembers being empty # so he thinks he’ll go with being loved  
> And then today I found them again

The doctors say he's probably around twenty seven, twenty eight, based on the limited time he had out of cryo though the lines on his his face speak a different story, too many lives for anyone to lead. Steve bites his tongue while they tut over the science. They say he should be older if he enlisted at eighteen. Fury gives Steve knowing that Steve is hiding something, and he can give a damn good guess as to what

Fury finally says it doesn't matter, as long as he's healthy the details don't matter. As long as he's useful, is what's said between the lines.

The doctors say he's as healthy as he could be. They say his memories should come back on their own. They say. They say. They say.

Steve is sick of listening to them talk so asks if he can take Bucky back to his place. Away from the doctors and SHIELD and all their incessant questioning.

Bucky follows him out wordlessly, hunched up as if waiting for a blow. Steve remembers when he walked with his shoulders back, looking too proud and too cocky. Waiting for someone to push him the wrong way. The trip back to Steve's apartment is entirely in silence. Steve doesn't know what to say and there's something reassuring in the way Bucky stares at everything around them.

Taking it all in, an entirely new world.

"Welcome home," he murmurs when he lets them into his apartment. He bites his lips when it sinks in what he said. This isn't Bucky's home. Bucky doesn't even remember him, there's no reason he would even want to live there. But Bucky doesn't seem to notice, focused instead on the inside of the apartment. The pieces of Steve's life scattered around.

Steve watches him quietly make his way through the apartment. Every movement is careful and slow, waiting for the trap to spring. The real hand reaches out and gently touches things, as if the cabinets and framed drawings will bite back. He reaches a stray glove and for a second he goes tense but then he turns away.

Steve quickly grabs the glove and throws it into his room. Out of sight, out of mind.

The photo makes him stop. It's old, yellowed and worn. Steve had found it tucked into one of the files SHIELD had given him.

"That's me," Bucky whispers, his fingers hovering over his own face. "And you."

Just hearing his voice, makes Steve smile. "Yea, you and me."

"Who are the others?"

"They…they were our team. We were called the Howling Commandos." Bucky purses his lips and he looks like he's focusing. Trying to remember. "It's okay Bucky. If you don't remember."

"Everyone wants me to." He runs his hands roughly through his hair. "You do. Saw it in your eyes the first time."

Steve grabs his wrist and makes him look at him, makes him focus. "It's okay," he repeats as soon as he's sure that Bucky is looking at him. "Do you trust me?"

Bucky looks lost and torn. Not sure what he should do. Some lingering emotions, leftover programming telling him to hate and lash out. And something else underneath that. Steve just hopes that the something else is his Bucky. If anything is left. "They say I'll probably never remember. That whoever I was, with the Soviets, with you, it's all fucking gone."

"I didn't ask that."

So close, Bucky's eyes are huge. Steve forgot what Bucky looked like when he was scared. Even in war, he rarely saw it. Right now he's scared, Steve just doesn't know of what. "I trust you. Fuck if I know why."

Steve grins. "Come on." He shifts his grip so he's holding Bucky's hand and pulls him out of the apartment.

"Where the hell are we going?"

Steve nudges him towards his car and gets into the driver's eat. "Everyone was suggesting if you had something familiar…" He shrugs, trying to hide that he needs a minute to swallow past the lump in his throat. "If you had something familiar, you'd remember things."

"Yea that's worked great," Bucky sneers, suddenly every inch the teenager he used to be.

"Exactly," he shoots Bucky a small smile. "So um, maybe if we get out of the city. Away from all this crap."

"Clear my mind or something?"

"Yea. Or something. Maybe make some new memories."

Bucky doesn't say anything else as Steve takes them away from the city, away from anything familiar. They went to the Catskills for camps as kids so he doesn't take them that way, and they went once to Washington D.C. so he avoids that direction too. Nothing familiar.

"How old am I?" Bucky suddenly asks some point after entering Pennsylvania. Steve jumps, he thought Bucky was asleep. "I heard the doctors trying to figure it out."

"You enlisted at 16, and di- fell off the train at 18." Steve glances at Bucky and sees him watching Steve avidly. "According to the law, you weren't legally able to enlist until 18. So uh the SHIELD doctors think you're older then you are."

Bucky nods, and settles back down in silence to process. When it starts to get dark, Steve pulls them off the highway to some cheap motel. They have food from a gas station they stopped at a few hours ago.

"I don't have any other clothes," Bucky points out as he flops onto one of the beds.

"We can get some tomorrow."

"Where are we going?"

"Does it matter?"

Bucky looks at him for a long minute. Judging his sincerity maybe. "No." He smiles and sits up. "It really fucking doesn't." They sleep in two different beds that first night, and the second. They talk more during the drives, Bucky plays with the radio and whines about the music choices.

The third night Steve is woken up by Bucky, only wearing his boxers, climbing into bed with him. "I couldn't sleep." Steve nods sleepily and wraps his arms around him. Bucky's still there in the morning. He doesn't ask about the nightmare and Bucky doesn't volunteer anything.

"SHIELD will find us, bring us back," Bucky says somewhere in South Dakota. They're taking a long winding path across the country. Steve sometimes wonders if they'll end up hitting every state. They could even make it to the two newer ones.

"I know." But he doesn't care, because even when they do, he'll keep Bucky safe. "I don't think they ever lost us actually. Easy to track people these days."

Bucky nods and falls silent again. All the way to the next motel. They settle down, starting in separate beds and Steve absently flips through the TV. There are only a few channels so he settles on an old rerun of Golden Girls.

"I dream about being the Winter Soldier," Bucky says, muffled as he strips out of his t-shirt. "About killing people." He stares down at his hands and Steve knows that look, he's seeing blood on his hands. "I'm not always in that black though. Sometimes….sometimes I wear blue." He glances up at Steve.

"You were our sniper," Steve says, resolving mentally not to hide anything.

"And you let me? At 16?"

Steve smiles tightly and rolls onto his side to face Bucky better. "I wasn't there. You went without me. Said you had to do something to make enough money to keep me alive."

Bucky laughs dryly. "You? I had to keep you alive?"

"It's a long story, you really want to hear it?"

Bucky moves to Steve's bed and stretches out beside him. "Tell me." They fall asleep with Bucky's head pillowed on Steve's shoulder and the drone of the TV in the background.

There's no more pretending to sleep in separate beds after that, just curling up together each night. Bucky remembers more, but not much. Flashes and images. Impressions from both his life as Bucky and his time as the Winter Soldier. SHIELD calls Steve once while Bucky is in the shower. They ask if he's safe, if James Barnes is under control and when Steve gives the affirmative to both, they seem to lose interest.

Steve doesn't tell Bucky about it but the next day, he throws the phone away. If they want to talk to him, they can do it face to face.

They make it to California without any other interruptions. Pull right up to the beach and sit on the hood of the car with ice cream. Steve feels himself dozing slightly. The sun is warm and Bucky is solid and familiar against him. This is the modern world he wanted. 

Bucky leaning in and kissing him is almost expected. It feels right. "I'm not trying to pay you back for everything with sex, just so you know," Bucky says sternly as he pulls back, looking as if he's expecting Steve to feel guilty.

"So what is this?" He mentally pleads for it to be anything but good bye. Anything but that. The sudden fear eats away at the warmth and comfort he was feeling just a moment ago.

"It's a please go out with me kiss. Because I want to."

Steve leans into kiss Bucky, it's sticky sweet from the ice cream.

"And what was that for?" Bucky asks softly, a small smile pulling at his lips. Steve wants to kiss him again to make it grow until something real and wide and bright. He has no memories of Bucky truly smiling and he realizes desperately that he wants one.

"Because I want to." He leans in to kiss him again, wondering if this time he'll get his smile, and if not this time then maybe after the next kiss or the one after. They kiss on the hood of the car until the sun goes down.

SHIELD gives them a week in California before approaching them and asking them to come back to New York, no judgment on however they choose to live their lives. They agree, but Bucky insists they drive back.


End file.
